This Would Not Happen In Argentina

[camberiu]

Or in Brazil, or any other South American country who had a first hand experience with dictatorship. The fact the most Americans are completely indifferent about something like this shows how much they (we) take our freedom for granted. This is the kind of stuff that used to happen in the banana republics of South America. Vidella would have been proud.




[font=Guardian Text Egyptian Web']The [/font]Chicago[font=Guardian Text Egyptian Web'] police department operates an off-the-books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family or attorneys while locked inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of a CIA black site.[/font]

 

[nkotb]

Never mind, not worth engaging.

 

[camberiu]

But I bet you love that US visa on your passport.

I don't need a VISA to go to the USA. But if the USA is so set into becoming a 3rd world country, I might as well go back to the one I was born in.

 

[Hybrid Ambassador]

I don't need a VISA to go to the USA. But if the USA is so set into becoming a 3rd world country, I might as well go back to the one I was born in.

OK, when you go back, let do the Kaiten Sushi chain there...A gold mine on the tapping! If I knew more Portuguese in depth
I would venture just myself but counting with clever young chap (for my failed Argentinean chain) as yourself in my side, could sleep more relaxed and drink the Caipirinhas more at ease! Ha,ha,haaa

 

[Montauk_Project]

Thanks for sharing. I also read that a lot of US prisons don´t allow visits, only video conferencing. So sad.

 

[camberiu]

Thanks for sharing. I also read that a lot of US prisons don´t allow visits, only video conferencing. So sad.

You are welcome. And if what you say is true, it is sad indeed. But at least it is still Constitutional. My concern/fear is that besides myself, Mathias and Bajo, due to our past experiences, most people here do not grasp the scale and magnitude of what is happening in the US right now. Basically the story that I linked to shows that the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth amendments of the US Constitution, for all practical intents and purposes have been nullified and voided. Habeas Corpus does not exist anymore. The government, the police, is kidnapping people in the middle of the night and taking them to black sites, where they are interrogated (beaten) and held incommunicado, without access to a lawyer, without a phone call and without being charged with anything. At least one detainee has died while being interrogated. This is happening not out in the sticks somewhere in the middle of the Appalachian Mountains, but in the cosmopolitan, supposedly liberal and progressive city of Chicago.

The only distinction of what is happening in the USA right now and what was happening in Argentina during the late 70s is intensity and scale. The fundamental logic, the principles (or lack thereof) used to justify kidnapping people and denying them their basic rights are the same.

Your civil rights right now are better protected in Argentina than in the US of A. Let that sink in for a moment.

If this news does not scare the shit out of every American in here....Well, it should.

 

[ben]

The structural problem is that edge cases are developing, and are not being honestly accounted for in law because to do so is politically toxic. There exist today many situations which cannot be covered by the current rules. The problem is that rather than have an honest debate about which cases qualify for different approaches, one of two equally bad things happen:

- A blanket exception is made for terror and the like, which means that checks have been removed;
- No changes are made, and law enforcement and/or the military is left to 'wing it' and see how much can they get away with. In the beginning this may be truly necessary, and but then of course these things creep ever bigger.

If the law openly acknowledged that sometimes exceptions must be made, with clear definition and enforcement of these limits, that would be a different story.

 

[camberiu]

If the law openly acknowledged that sometimes exceptions must be made, with clear definition and enforcement of these limits, that would be a different story.

Trust me, we have been down this path in South America. Once you start making exception in order to "fight terrorists", it is over. Might as well just kiss the whole thing goodbye.

 

[Bajo_cero2]

Trust me, we have been down this path in South America. Once you start making exception in order to "fight terrorists", it is over. Might as well just kiss the whole thing goodbye.

I think that they are changing the political system from a righ-wing populism to extreme-neoliberal (latin america alike: market and wealth for a few).

The only way to make it happends is with a very strong social control.

Scary...

In 30 years common people is going to be as wealthy as they are in Argentina.

 

[ben]

Trust me, we have been down this path in South America. Once you start making exception in order to "fight terrorists", it is over. Might as well just kiss the whole thing goodbye.

That amounts to option #1 above - blanket exception for terror, into which just about anything can be made to fit. That's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that if the limits on law enforcement are too onerous then those limits will be skirted at some point. That isn't too great either. The only way around that is to have edge cases which are clearly defined, and that have a mechanism for oversight built in.

Justice Scalia was roundly mocked when he presented the following defense of torture:

I think it's very facile for people to say, "Oh, torture is terrible." You posit the situation where a person that you know for sure knows the location of a nuclear bomb that has been planted in Los Angeles and will kill millions of people. You think it's an easy question? You think it's clear that you cannot use extreme measures to get that information out of that person?​

See an example of such mockery over at The Atlantic.

But the truth is that the crux of their criticism is that 'OK, maybe that's justifiable, but most cases in question aren't like that'. Which brings us back to the main point: If a society would ever be honest enough to acknowledge the limits of their rules - the limits do exist in practice in any event, they just aren't acknowledged - things might work a wee bit better.